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As deaths on roads in Australian cities rise, experts say one of the most effective road safety measures is languishing in the “political too-hard basket” in New South Wales.

The number of people killed while walking or riding in big cities has increased by almost a quarter since 2022, pushing Australia away from reaching its target of halving total road deaths by 2030 compared with the 2018-20 annual average.

Road safety experts widely regard reducing urban speed limits as one of the cheapest and fastest ways to reduce death and injury in areas where pedestrians, cyclists and motorists compete for limited street space.

But Ralston Fernandes, a former director of road safety strategy and policy at Transport for NSW, says the state government is stalling on efforts to reduce speed limits in Sydney. “The government isn’t prepared to make those changes [to speed limits], it’s dragging its heels … there’s so much opportunity, but we should be doing more of it, and rolling it out faster,” he says.

Fernandes and other senior departmental sources say there is a backlog of requests to Transport for NSW from local councils and the public to reduce speed limits from 50kmh/h to 40km/h and from 40km/h to 30km/h on residential streets.

In 2024, Transport for NSW was developing plans to roll out a handful of 30km/h zones in Sydney as part of measures to meet the state’s road trauma reduction targets. But momentum slowed after the NSW premier, Chris Minns, publicly rejected a proposal to reduce Sydney’s CBD speed limit to 30km/h.

“It killed off any serious conversations about 30km/h zones in the CBD,” a senior source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says.

In an internal email from January 2025, obtained under freedom of information laws, a traffic management director at Transport for NSW, Shane Schneider, said the department was not acting on any request for a 30km/h zone in Sydney’s CBD because of the government’s opposition to reducing speeds.

“We haven’t rejected any requests, but are not actively progressing reviews,” Schneider said.

In early April this year, City of Sydney council made another request to reduce the speed limit to 30km/h in the CBD and in some suburbs with high pedestrian activity within its jurisdiction. It has given Transport for NSW three months to respond.

A Transport for NSW spokesperson said it had assessed speed zone changes on a case-by-case basis. They said 30km/h proposals required “comprehensive assessment” and must be supported by road design and function. They were not currently a priority.

They said the department would continue to work with councils to deliver road safety improvements consistent with meeting the government’s road trauma reduction target.

‘Perhaps the most promising area in road safety’

In the 12 months to May 2026, 484 people were killed on roads in Australia’s major cities. According to government data, six in 10 were “vulnerable road users” – pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.

Of those vulnerable road users killed, nearly two-thirds died on roads signed at 50km/h or 60km/h.

London and several big European cities, including Paris and Brussels, have introduced 20mph (32km/h) or 30km/h zones in urban areas where cars mix with people walking and cycling.

Since Wales introduced a default 20mph speed limit on residential roads in 2023, collisions on those streets have fallen by 22.5%, according to Welsh government data. Death or serious injury fell by 11%. In Australia, however, the political appetite for slower streets has been comparatively limited.

Speed limits have been incrementally reduced in cities in the past few decades, largely through the rollout of 40km/h zones in areas with schools and high pedestrian activity.

Speed limit reductions on local roads can be combined with or substituted for physical traffic calming measures such as speed humps, road narrowing and raised pedestrian crossings that encourage cars to slow down.

Fernandes says these zones have improved safety, but they have been introduced on an ad-hoc basis in NSW and cover only a small proportion of suitable streets.

And 30km/h streets are largely confined to university campuses, parks and a few area-wide trials in NSW.

Victoria has gone further, with council-wide trials of 30km/h zones on all local streets under way in inner Melbourne.

According to an analysis by RMIT University’s Dr Afshin Jafari, Melbourne has double the length of Sydney’s 40km/h streets. Modelling by Jafari found a default 30km/h speed limit on Melbourne’s residential streets would significantly boost the safety of people riding bicycles while having a minimal impact on car travel times.

“For every person that wants cars to slow down, there’s someone saying we should drive as fast as we want,” Fernandes says. “It’s a polarising issue.”

Yet new polling suggests the extent of public opposition to lower speed limits is overestimated. A nationally representative survey of 1,500 people by University of Sydney’s TransportLab, awaiting publication but provided exclusively to Guardian Australia, found 54% of Australians would support a 30km/h default speed limit on local roads, compared with 34% who would oppose it.

Maria Eugenia Keller from Queensland University of Technology has interviewed and surveyed hundreds of road management bureaucrats and consultants to understand the barriers to lower speed limits.

“Reducing speed limits is perhaps the most promising area within road safety, because of the potential it has to save lives,” Keller says. “But there’s real political fear about public backlash.

“We lack strong leadership that follows the evidence instead of whatever someone is saying on social media.”

The head of media at the NRMA, Peter Khoury, says it opposes the “arbitrary and universal slashing of speed limits” and argues speed-limit reductions have been ineffective in cities.

“Purely off the basis of physics, [slowing down] reduces the risk of death and injury, but that’s the hypothetical argument … The reality that we see on the ground is very different,” he says.

“We don’t believe it’s evidence-based. We believe it’s creating confusion for drivers … When they slash speed limits, they put a speed camera. There’s not enough consultation,” Khoury says.

A 2018 Transport for NSW report found high pedestrian areas with 40km/h speed limits implemented in the last two decades have experienced “almost double the reduction in casualty crashes compared to other urban roads”.

Michael Timms, the NSW chair of the Australian College of Road Safety, investigated thousands of crashes during his 30-year career in the NSW police.

“Deaths are the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “We could fill a stadium each year with the number of people seriously injured on our roads. Speed [management] will determine if NSW and Australia can meet their road trauma reduction targets,” he said.